


You Came Back

by hisorako



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Once Upon a Secret Santa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-09
Updated: 2015-01-09
Packaged: 2018-03-06 19:43:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3146327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hisorako/pseuds/hisorako
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set after the S4A finals "Heroes and Villains". </p><p>Rumple never stopped loving her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Came Back

**Author's Note:**

> A (very late) Once Upon A Secret Santa gift for the lovely losing-to-a-rug, who wanted a Rumbelle reunion fic. 
> 
> I'm very sorry for how long this took, but I was so pleasantly surprised when I got your name. We've spoken before, and you've always seemed wonderfully kind.

Rumple hadn't been Rumple in a very long time - or so it felt. Hiding under his cursed name, "Gold" had been able to put to work some of his legal (and illegal) expertise to keep himself fed. The Curse had even granted him useful tidbits like a Social Security number and apparently a birth certificate, so he'd been able to snag a flat. It was nothing extravagant, but it'd keep him until his plan came to fruition.

Tapping his cane against the ground, he stopped at a cafe along the way to his next meeting. It had become a near-daily routine, and, by now, the regular staff recognised him (his distinctive hair and gold-headed staff had certainly helped with that).

"What'll it be?" the blonde-haired woman with the dull brown eyes at the counter drawled lazily. "The usual?"

Nodding his assent, he waited as she poured his herbal tea and prepared a light sandwich. She passed it to him over the counter with a “have a nice day” after counting his money. With an acknowledging shake of his head, he limped out.

With the sun rising up high into the clear-enough blue sky, it was a picturesque day - the very sort that reminded him of all he'd lost. Bae - he’d never be able to visit his little boy again. No one out here knew his son had ever existed, as far as he knew. There was no one with whom he could celebrate the birthdays and mourn the death days. There was no one capable of sharing his pain, but… Belle. That was an entirely different predicament, but one all the same. Surely, she hated him now. He’d lied to her, betraying her at a time when he should’ve been holding her. After many long nights turning in a cold, lonely bed, he’d managed to contemplate the situation several times over. It was all his fault. He shouldn’t have lied to her. He’d permitted himself to believe that finding and exploiting loopholes was an inerasable part of his being; he’d been made to evade the rules of mankind. In some sick way, he’d thought that his cheating (for that was what he now accepted it to be) had kept the universe in balance. After all, hadn’t history proved time and time again that, where there were heroes like Emma Swan, there had to be villains like him? He’d thought he’d always be the villain, snarling tooth and claw at the bright young ones. But Belle...she’d shown him the light. He didn’t need to play a part when he was with her. Hero or villain, it was all the same to her. She’d always loved him. Where was she now? In the library, probably, opening it up and letting light in from the windows, just as she did that time in the Dark Castle when he’d caught her. Shaking the dangerous thoughts from his head, he couldn’t help it when his disobedient mind repeated in rhythm with his steps, “And that was when you fell in in love with her. And that was when you fell in love with her.”

If all went according to plan, he’d see her again - soon.

* * *

 

It must’ve been a bleak and stormy night somewhere when he arrived with the Queens of Darkness in tow. Magic of this world and the past permeated the borders he’d so carefully (and ironically, he noted without amusement) set to keep out intruders. Storybrooke looked the same as always, but perhaps brighter with greener grass and repainted shop fronts.

The cover of night settled around them, and the lights were on in many of the homes. Somewhere out there, he hoped at least a lamp was lit in a salmon-coloured house, where the most wonderful woman would be sitting in bed with a book in her hands and the covers up against her. Perhaps she was reading one of their favourites. Perhaps she was thinking of him.

At that idea, he paled with the consideration of a more legitimate one: perhaps she was in the arms of another man - one who was younger, stronger, and better in every way. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise to him; after all, that was what she deserved.

Still, he hoped, as futile as it was, that she waited for him.

* * *

 

It took the longest week of his very, very long life for him to gather up the courage to speak to her. He’d caught glimpses of her in the most ordinary of settings: shelving books, sipping iced tea,sitting at the window of her flat. But he’d kept his distance, and, as patient as he could be, this was one time in which urgency moved his old bones.

He waited for her on Thursday night, the night when she stayed latest at the library. Opening the back door with a wave of his hand, he approached her quietly. Perhaps it was the magic, perhaps it was something simpler and more powerful, but she turned to him while he was still a distance away.

Dropping the book she held, she gaped, pain crossing her face before being replaced with contradicting sorrow and joy. Her blue eyes wet with seas of tears ready to be shed, and her mouth opened in a gasp. But the most astonishing of all was her abdomen, swollen with what he could only guess was child. Her child. _His_ child. _Their_ child.

She flew to him, and he opened his arms as he came forward to meet her. "Rumple," she cried in his ear, anger and betrayal and longing filling her voice as she began to shake with sobs. Her arms wrapped tightly around him, as if trying to prove that it was all real. "You came back."

"Belle." With heavy, wheezing breaths, he was broken for her, torn between all the apologies he wanted to give her, so many that he'd run out of air or life to give before he could tell her.

Instead, he setted for the next best thing: "I love you."

When they went home (to _their_ home) that night, neither of them could remember who started the kisses or who started the "sorry"'s. But it didn't matter anymore; those were issues for when the morning came.

And indeed, the morning had come.


End file.
